Franco the Succulent

By Larry Turner

Author Larry Turner is a US Army veteran and twenty-six-year law enforcement officer. In September 2018, he attended Save A Warrior Cohort 058.

 

Save A Warrior and the National Center of Excellence for Complex-PTS, is an evidence-based intervention and proven solution for active duty military, returning veterans, and first responders struggling with Complex-PTS, which is the leading cause of the suicide epidemic facing America’s frontline warriors.

In Franco The Succulent, Larry has an amusingly unconventional conversation with Franco, a succulent that adorns his office. In the conversation that unfolds, Larry describes the spiritual awakening that occurred during the cohort, and shares some of the wisdom he found on the path of recovery that followed in his journey out of insanity. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Aug 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781977268204

Book preview

Franco the Succulent

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2023 Larry Turner

v1.0

The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Cover Photo © 2023 Larry Turner. All rights reserved - used with permission.

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the one person who reads it and finds something within its pages that brings more love, joy, peace, and happiness into their life.

I love you.

Keep fighting forward!

—Larry

#JustSaveOne

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Save A Warrior and all of the generous people who donate to support their mission. Without it, this book would not exist, because I would not be around to write it.

I consider it a miracle that Save A Warrior and I crossed paths when we did, and for the experience itself.

I am most thankful for my wife, Sue, who journeyed with me into and out of Complex PTS (thirty-three years thus far), lovingly stayed by my side, and afterward went through the program herself.

I thank those who came back for me and showed me the path out of the Complex PTS insanity I was in.

I’m thankful for the mentors and fellow travelers who stuck with me as I crawled my way from insanity to reality. Recovery is not easy work, and I am appreciative of all that do the work on themselves.

I wish to thank all of the great people I’ve met in the rooms of recovery who freely share their life-saving wisdom with anyone who asks, with no strings attached.

I follow the other warriors on this path before me, as long as they have something that I want. Sanity, sobriety, confidence, peace, and joy.

If they have it, and I want it, I gotta do what you do in order to get it.

Once I have it, if I want to keep it, I have to give it away.

In that manner, we all walk together toward the same goal.

I also wish to thank Megan Cox, who painted the artistic backdrop on the covers.

—Larry

Foreword

I’ve never written a forward before and certainly never have been asked to do so until Larry honored me with that request just a few days before he completed this book. Larry and I both work/serve at Save A Warrior and have dedicated our lives to helping others recover from Complex PTS and Suicidal Ideation. There’s something you gotta get about Larry. He’s a certifiable badass! Maybe some of you reading this will have the joy of meeting him one day, or if you are ready to be done suffering, and apply to Save A Warrior, perhaps he will be the one doing your rostering call. Now, Larry being the badass that he is, a US Army veteran, and a retired law enforcement officer, who visually, to one who doesn’t know Larry, might appear as one scary dude. But once he starts speaking, a fountain of wisdom and, oftentimes humor, starts pouring from his heart, in a language that touches the very core of each person he interacts with. Larry is a very humble man who prefers to be a nobody and just spread joy and love wherever he goes. So, convincing him to stop deleting all the essays and books he wrote and compile them into a book he would actually publish was quite a task! 

You see, people like Larry, myself, and many if not most in the Warrior Class (veterans and first responders), have a lot of significance around our identities and affiliations we’ve built with our units and professions. There was a day when if you asked me who I was, I’d say I was a veteran, infantryman, or some other profession-based identity. My significance in my professional identity was a way of covering up that I didn’t really know who I was, or that I had a lot of shame around who I believed I was. For me, it was a combo platter of both. I hated myself. I truly believed I was the worst human being on the planet. I believed that I was a mistake and that my existence was invalid, so I had to create false identities, personalities, and ways of being to get my needs met. I also developed a compulsive need to control every possible outcome, in every situation I was in, to have a sense of peace and security. What I was blind to was each attempt at controlling the future was digging me deeper into a pit of despair. 

The only way to predict the future is by looking at the past, and I was spending so much of my life riddled with anxiety, hypervigilance, stress, fear, and sadness, trying to control every aspect of the future, so that the past would not repeat itself, thinking that the next move on the game board would be the thing that would fix everything. I was actually projecting my past onto the future and living in a future dictated by my past. All the while, I was never present in the moment, which is the only place peace and serenity can occur. I was so wrapped up in my significance that I never realized I was abandoning myself the whole time.

I had Complex PTS, which began in childhood from not having a fully formed sense of self, left to do my best to survive in a dysfunctional family of poverty, abuse, violence, and addiction. I had to develop survival traits that became my default setting in how I showed up in life, to those around me, and by the time I showed up to Save A Warrior at thirty-six years old, I didn’t know that I didn’t know I had been living my entire life in a vicious circle (we talk funny here). I was repeating the same behaviors, over and over, knowing exactly how it would turn out, and doing it anyway. I had previously been certain that the problems in my life were from what happened to me in Iraq, when I was deployed there from 2003 to 2004. My mental health professionals supported my beliefs. It wasn’t until I went to Save A Warrior that I realized that it wasn’t so much PTSD that I had been suffering from; rather, it was formative trauma from my childhood, collapsed with adulthood moral injury. I felt awake and aware for the first time, and these were people who were speaking a language that sounded funny, but at the same time, made perfect sense. These were wounded healers, who had recovered from the same things I had been suffering from, and they were coming back for ME of all people. Parts of me didn’t feel worthy or deserving, but I wanted what they had, so I did what they did. I was honest, open, and willing. I was vulnerable and coachable. I was ready to be done suffering. 

A big discovery for me, and for many who come to Save A Warrior, is that I must let go of my significance and just be an ordinary human being, having a human being experience. My suffering is not that special, I am not that special, and I MUST take responsibility for my life. I was blaming all of my life’s problems on others, never realizing that the only one who was responsible was me. That doesn’t mean that others didn’t have a part to play in what happened to me, but rather than living in resentments and stirring up drama around those people, places, and things, I can be complete with it and let it be. I own my side of the street, take responsibility for it, and move forward with my life. What other people have done, or have not done, really doesn’t matter, as it’s in the past, and the past can’t be changed. All that matters is what I am doing to continue to heal myself, right here, right now. A key piece of that is working with others and leading them through the same work that I was led through. So today, I lead others through this work. I work with others in 12-step rooms ending in Anonymous, I fellow travel with men who are also on this path with me, and each time I share my story with others and lead them to the solution, or at least what the solution could look like, I get back what I gave tenfold (spiritually speaking). I don’t get mine until you get yours.

If you are a veteran who is ready to be done suffering, I encourage you to read this book, go to saveawarrior.org and thoroughly read through the website, and submit an application. Let’s have a conversation and see if we are a good fit for each other. Save A Warrior saved my life, and for that, I am eternally grateful. 

Thank you for listening to me, and I hope you enjoy reading Larry’s book as much as I did. This is just a snapshot of some of the things we talk about regularly at Save A Warrior, and hear this the right way: none of us has a patent on healing. All the information is out there, in thousands of books, and in hundreds and hundreds of self-help programs. You just have to look. Save A Warrior has distilled the best parts of it into their program, and the novel way in which it is presented, along with the honest conversations had, can and will transform your life, if you are willing to stand in the possibility that maybe, just maybe, what these people are talking about might be true.

Joe Robb

Save A Warrior Cohort 0109

Table of Contents

Preface

Integrity

Birds

Awareness of Spirit

Hypervigilance, Neuroplasticity, and the Gratitude Challenge

Kindness Is Always an Option

Relativity in the Here and Now

Decisions

Self-Value and Worth

Resentment

Honest, Open, Willing

Boundaries—Emotional Sobriety

Vulnerability—Non-shareable Problems

Mourning and Grieving

Surrender—Care of God

The Warrior Meditation®

The After-Party—God Is Love

Questions—Special Concerns

A Reading List

About the Author

Preface

Me: Make sure it’s the book you want.

Franco: What’s that you say?

Me: Oh. It’s something my mentor told me the other day. He told me, ‘Larry, write a book, but make sure it’s the book you want.’ Hmm…

Franco: So, what’s the problem?

Me: Well, I don’t know how to write a book, I guess, is the big problem. There are many problems, but that would probably be the biggest one, not knowing how to write one.

Franco: I see. And has not knowing what you are doing ever slowed you?

Me: That’s a good point. No, it has not. Thank you.

Franco: That’s what I’m here for. That, and beautifying your office.

Me: He also said, ‘Don’t make it all crazy. Just keep it simple.’

Franco: Is that when you told him you were talking to a houseplant through the whole thing as your big idea?

Me: Nah, I didn’t mention that part. I figured it would be just one of those things that I ask forgiveness for afterward instead of permission.

Franco: You seem to have many of those moments, almost like it’s a life code.

Me: "I like the word ‘mischievous.’ I can be mischievous. When I struggle to accomplish something, what helps is if I hold myself accountable to others. In this